Sega Astro City Mini

[Jonpachi]

Only one shmup (Fantasy Zone) announced so far, but there's going to be at least 36 games, so hopefully we'll hear about more soon.

https://kotaku.com/sega-announces-mini- ... 1844290153

[CaptainAhab]

The Astro City Mini looks like a shrunken-down arcade cabinet, similar to the Neo Geo Mini. Unlike that system, though, Sega says that the stick uses proper microswitches, so it should be a lot more satisfying to use. There’s an HDMI-out on the back as well as two USB-A ports, a Micro USB port, and a headphone jack.

This is what I was wondering... looks it's been confirmed that this won't make the same mistake(s) that the Neo-Geo Mini did.

[Jonpachi]

Yeah they even showed a controller too. Should be pretty legit if the games list ends up being quality. So far I'm pretty meh on the titles listed.

[Marc]

Hm I'll probably end up picking one up simply for Alien Syndrome and Revenge of Death Adder from the few titles announced so far. I'd still prefer proper AGES releases though.

[pablumatic]

Its a must-have for me for Death Adder alone. Actual arcade ports of Dark Edge and Alien Storm further my want for this. Hope for a western release, but if not I'll still get this one.

[Necronom]

Yeah, microswitches is awesome news
Technically, they could put Hyper Duel on it, since they seem to own the rights to all technosoft games.
Maybe they release a tiny lightgun for House of the Dead along it...just joking, though I guess after the gamegear micro anything can happen

[Konsolkongen]

The pixel scaling is going to be all over the place if the games are a mix of 240p and medium resolution titles. It’s going to look horrible

Here’s hoping that the HDMI output will fare better, but if this is handled by M2 like their other minis then I don’t expect much.

Still an interesting machine with something a bit more unique than usual.

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

I've always wanted a mini candy cab, one time even considered building one out of wood (getting all the curves right would have been a nightmare though). This will be quite big even, says 15x30cm! I almost don't care about the game selection, this will be hacked soon anyway to become a universal MAME machine...

edit: shit, according to this video

https://youtu.be/Or7-0Nar9-Q?t=300

it will measure only 13x17,7x11,6cm... I'll still get one.

[Gunstar]

It's not M2 or a Sega internal studio:


Still, the pad looks nice and hopefully, the standalone stick will be decent:

[bigbadboaz]

Love the Astro design on a pad but the jury's out until we can hold it in our hands. No way to tell if that's a true Sega rolling Dpad and those buttons appear to sit way too high.

[Josh128]

...

[Konsolkongen]

Surprised to hear that M2 isn’t involved. ...Let’s hope that’s a good thing

I imagine that the emulation will still be poor as most emulated releases are, but at least there’s a very slim chance that these guys won’t be making the same mistakes M2 did with the minis

[Koa Zo]

Outputting this to my TV and playing with the heavy-weight joystick, this thing is sick.
Most of these games have never been available on a home system, I don't get the whining I've read (on other forums and youtube) from a lot of people about the line-up.
Last night i just played a bit of Alien Storm and Scramble Spirits, and both are incredible. Alex Kidd Lost Stars was a charming surprise too - I'd never known about the arcade original, it's just oozing 80s Sega style and solid gameplay.
Had to check out Rad Mobile too and that plays fine with the old tap-tap joystick steering style. If only we could get a driving games unit with a wheel and shiftier and pedals...

People complained for years about Sega not doing anything with much of their arcade library. They've finally brought home arcade perfect(?) ports of 37 games, and everyone seems to be sleeping on it.

[Fudoh]

And now please a 17-19" tabletop version with an injection molded Astro-City style case. 60,000 yen. Winter 2021. Take my money, please!

(waiting for my Astro Mini - maybe tomorrow...)

[SavagePencil]

I think it’s great! I’m waiting on the full stick, but the pad is surprisingly good.

[bigbadboaz]

They've finally brought home arcade perfect(?) ports of 37 games, and everyone seems to be sleeping on it.

Here's my problem with it, not to downplay the apparent fact they've done a great job here:

The mini fad is completely played out by now. It's not convenient - never mind downright wasteful - to have to buy another little chipset-in-an-enclosure just to get an official version of this ROM or that ROM.

I'm a pretty damn nerdy lifelong gamer. I don't want more than one or two of these little consoles in my setup, particularly when from the very beginning they could each be hacked to expand their library. Particularly that now we're getting shrunken arcade cabs with their own screens, and giant joysticks with the chipsets inside, it's just more and more redundant and wasteful. The subset of hobbyists willing to collect EACH and EVERY ONE of these has to be quite small.

Kudos to Sega for the quality effort they seem to have put in here, for what it is. But as far as being grateful for this title or that finally being available for purchase: no, not like this.

[Konsolkongen]

How is the scaling on the small screen and output to a TV? Anyone mind taking some decent photos of both from games running various resolutions?

[Fudoh]

I'll be happy to report back once I got mine. It seems that quality on the internal screen is nice with an odd 120-scanline option, which doesn't look too bad on the small screen.

HDMI on a TV seem to scale to full height vertically, which of course neglects any integer scaling and causes shimmering scrolling. Also scanlines on a HDMI are a complete farce (again 120 instead of 240 and a complete mismatch to the actual pixel positions).

[Konsolkongen]

Auch doesn’t sound very good. But please do report back. I know that you understand the importance of integer scaling so I’ll trust your verdict on the thing.

[Bassa-Bassa]

Is it already known if it presents the same infamous glitches as Mame on The Revenge of Death Adder?

https://mametesters.org/view.php?id=5233

And Rad Mobile, while we're on it?

https://mametesters.org/view.php?id=2524

Thanks.

[Koa Zo]

Is it already known if it presents the same infamous glitches as Mame on The Revenge of Death Adder?

https://mametesters.org/view.php?id=5233

And Rad Mobile, while we're on it?

https://mametesters.org/view.php?id=2524

Thanks.

Awh darn that stinks.
I'd never played Arabian Fight before tonight, but it seemed like the sound effects were too pronounced compared to the BGM - maybe it was like that in the arcade, but something felt off.
Also credit-fed through Rad Mobile and got stuck on a guardrail at one point, which I don't recall ever happening in the arcade. In all other aspects I really enjoyed playing Rad Mobile again, especially as part of this mix of games. I have no technical display expertise, but the "Rival" text over the opponent cars seemed harder to read scaled-up on my TV. Overall I've been surprised by the amount of blockiness.

The varied degrees of blockiness among the games in this collection is indeed one of the charming experiences to be had in playing this unit. Ninja Princess is luscious with all it's big chunky colorful pixels. I never before experienced the scaling in Arabian Fight or in Alien Storm or Scramble Spirits ...and Dark Edge - holy moly! Are Rad Mobile and Dark Edge the pinnacle of Sega's scaling sprite styles?
Culminating with Virtua Fighter, this collection beautifully showcases the evolution of Sega's pixel art. Dottori Kun being included as the bonus 37th game really rounds out the pixel art evolution on hand in the Astro City Mini.

[Josh128]

They've finally brought home arcade perfect(?) ports of 37 games, and everyone seems to be sleeping on it.

Here's my problem with it, not to downplay the apparent fact they've done a great job here:

The mini fad is completely played out by now. It's not convenient - never mind downright wasteful - to have to buy another little chipset-in-an-enclosure just to get an official version of this ROM or that ROM.

I'm a pretty damn nerdy lifelong gamer. I don't want more than one or two of these little consoles in my setup, particularly when from the very beginning they could each be hacked to expand their library. Particularly that now we're getting shrunken arcade cabs with their own screens, and giant joysticks with the chipsets inside, it's just more and more redundant and wasteful. The subset of hobbyists willing to collect EACH and EVERY ONE of these has to be quite small.

Kudos to Sega for the quality effort they seem to have put in here, for what it is. But as far as being grateful for this title or that finally being available for purchase: no, not like this.

Agree 100% with this sentiment. Why not just make official PC emulations available for purchase via Steam or the companies own websites? I already have a NES mini and SNES mini. The SNES mini is much better as the NES mini seems slower and needs extensions for the controllers. Neither will give you usable output to a CRT TV or perfect scanlines in 1080p if thats what you want to do. With a PC, you can easily do both.

That said, if they would make a Blast City mini with Model 2 and Model 3 games, I'd have no choice but to get one.

[Konsolkongen]

Analog output is dead and is never coming back. It would increase costs to have both HDMI and RGB/component output. These micro consoles aren’t marketed to hardcore gamers with niche CRT setups.

[Josh128]

Yes, I know this, but the point still stands that they could make PC versions available with options for native output if the end user had hardware allowing it, plus we wouldnt have to own dozens of mini-consoles to legally play those games.

[bigbadboaz]

I don't think these companies - across the board - have ever seen the potential market for that type of release as large enough. Sadly, since they did release a Steam Sega collection years back and never touched it again, I'm guessing that one foray proved that they were right.

[strayan]

They could make life a whole lot simpler by adding a line doubled VESA640x480 output option to these mini consoles so I could at least downscale with relative ease.

720x480p signals are pain: https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comm ... xperiment/

[Konsolkongen]

I got my Astro City Mini yesterday and I think it's a pretty decent machine apart for the obvious scaling and scanline issues. I also wish it saved high scores.
Otherwise the screen is actually really good (IPS?), and in most cases the games are scaled correctly on the horisontal axis which is great as the majority scroll in that direction so we avoid shimmering. The games that does not integer scale on the H axis all look awful. I have never seen the McWill Game Gear screen IRL so I can't say for sure, but Wonderboy on this thing might just be the worst scaled game ever. The shimmering is so bad that it really is unplayable. Not much better on the TV either.
Here's hoping that the scaling will be correctable with software hacks in the future

The buttons and stick on the machine feel great! I'm surprised how playable it is in this state. The Control Pads are alright. D-pads are nowhere near as good as a Saturn or Mega Drive controller, but I still think they are decent. The buttons are pretty good though. If you are looking for a better controller I found that the Mega Drive Mini 6 button pad from the JAP or Asian model works perfectly on the Astro City Mini, as does the Brook Universal Fighting Board (hold 1P + 1K when you plug in).

These controllers do not work:
3 Button Mega Drive Mini pad, Retro-bit Saturn/Mega Drive USB pads (first revisions), Retro-bit Mega Drive USB pad (second revision with Switch support), PC-Engine Mini pad.

EDIT: I have yet to open mine but it would appear that the 800x480px screen is oriented vertically inside the machine?

I base that off this guy who has managed to run RetroArch on his where we can see that the menu is oriented on the wrong axis:
https://twitter.com/bakueikozo/status/1 ... 2400629767

Looking through the logs on his blog I found this that seems to verify that this is indeed the case:

Code: Select all

...
[lcd0_para]
lcd_used = 1
lcd_driver_name = "h2009"
lcd_if = 4
lcd_x = 480
lcd_y = 800
lcd_width = 52
lcd_height = 86
...

...
[lcd1_para]
lcd_used = 1
lcd_driver_name = "EP952"
lcd_if = 0
lcd_x = 1280
lcd_y = 720
lcd_width = 150
lcd_height = 94
...

So what the hell? Why then border off the screen to a 16:9 aspect when they clearly did not care about proper scaling and in this orientation they would be have been able to fill out the entire screen area. Perhaps they thought the scaling was TOO terrible if they did that

I don't think that even with interpolation you would be able to get a decent shimmer free full screen if you stretched a 320x224 game to 480x336 and made a custom front glass with no top and bottom borders, as the resolution probably is far too low for that to work.

Ironically the only game that’s scaled properly is Dottori Kun

[Fudoh]

I don't think the screen is installed vertically, but it might be a mobile screen, that draws lines across its shorter axis. I have a 6" Pi screen that's also technically 1080x1920 instead of 1920x1080.

If the screen was installed vertically they wouldn't have had a reason to opt for pillarboxed 4:3.

[Konsolkongen]

You're right. I didn't realise that was a possibility

That's good. Then it should be possible to integer scale medium resolution System 24 games on that screen, although in a smaller frame.

EDIT: And it should be possible to add single pixel black scanlines for 240p games too

[Fudoh]

certainly, but then again (afaik) no emulator in any of the mini systems was ever tweaked. It's usually the only option to run a complete replacement (e.g. retroarch).